Straight talk excess

One of the fascinating things about this election cycle is the way the Internet is breaking the stranglehold of traditional political and media institutions. For example, we all knew that Hillary Clinton was a lock for the Democratic nomination because nobody could compete with her massive money machine… that is until Barack Obama used the Internet to go straight to the people, and set new fundraising records in the process.

The same is beginning to happen in terms of media coverage, with some wags referring to 2008 as the first “YouTube election.” The video above is a great example, generating nearly 400,000 views in its first 24-hours online; not quite the audience of a network news program, but damn impressive nonetheless. It begs the question how much longer the national media can stick to the “Straight Talk Express” narrative without damaging (further) their credibility?

Meanwhile the DNC is doing its part to help both voters and reporters discern truth from fiction with today’s launch of McCainPedia:

McCainpedia.org is a wiki run by the DNC’s Research, Communications, and Internet teams. The goal is to centralize research material, allowing the general public to use it as they see fit.

Opposition research is nothing new, but its product is traditionally aimed at journalists and opinion makers, who then regurgitate the tidbits they find most compelling, and in the context of their choosing. Campaign seasons are typically filled with swarms of press releases pushing one factoid or another, most of which never make it into the mainstream media narrative.

With McCainPedia, the DNC is both seeking to cut out the gatekeepers, while simultaneously giving them a tool to do their job better. Sure, this is a partisan site created by a partisan organization, but facts are facts, and each citation is thoroughly documented.

The legacy media may want to ignore these new developments, but they do so at their own peril.

Every time they MSM claims McCain is “honorable”, or a “maverick”, or mentions the “straight talk express” I want to hurl. McCain is a fraud. The entire GOP platform is a fraud, and the MSM plays along, as if they are part of the narrative.

Please name one issue, McCain has not flip flopped on.

I love the I was against torture before I was for it. How about “Bush’s tax cuts? “I cannot in good conscience support a tax cut in which so many of the benefits go to the most fortunate among us at the expense of middle-class Americans who need tax relief.” He then goes on to say he now supports them.

While you would think that plain, clear evidence like this proves FlipFlop McCain is a typical lying piece of shit asshole, you have to remember that the true believers like LilBitch/PiddlyDick either a) won’t ever see it because they are afraid of the truth b) will simply lie about it and say it doesn’t exit.

The faaaar right nutjobs don’t care about facts or even supporting candidates who hold positions different than theirs. They simply use the mindset of a 14-year-old high school student and cheer YEAH GOP no matter what.

Even when McCain is talking straight, instead of with his forked tongue, you can’t trust what he says because he doesn’t do his homework. Nowhere is this more evident than in his absurd budget promises — tax cuts and deficit reductions … achievable only by cutting the defense budget — and every other federal program — by 86%. It’s not that McCain is deliberately lying; he doesn’t know better. Rarely do we see a presidential candidate so ill-prepared to make actual decisions. But, this is a lifetime trait of McCain. He’s been goofing off his entire life. He graduated only 5 places from dead last in his 899-student class at Annapolis — because he didn’t study. The White House is the last place you want a skater who is perpetually ill-informed because he’s too lazy to acquire the basic information required to make sound decisions.

RIP: John McCain has sold his soul to the right wing – and they will never embrace him. He has shamelessly lied about his posiitons – this is just a devastating piece that documents on video just a few of his flip-flops and actual lies.

@8 The only reason the lobbyists are leaving McCain’s campaign is he got caught by the media. Absent the unfavorable publicity, they’d still be there — and would stay there all the way into the White House.

I guess if McCain really wants to “clear the decks” of improper influence by lobbyists, he will also give back all the money raised by those lobbyists who recently resigned from his campaign????

(still waiting).

Of course, now that he is the presumptive nominee of the party, he doesn’t need those fund-raising people any more, because the national party apparatus will take over in raising funds for him (or trying to do so). It reminds me a bit of when the guy who introduced him made some improper comments about Obama, all to the delight and amusement of the crowd, after which the presenter was praised “we need more guys like him”. Then when he gets called on it by the media, he quietly issues a statement to the national media repudiating the remarks – but not doing so to the audience which heard him. Seems like he is trying to take all the benefits, while at the same time distance himself from the negatives. He figures he can have it both ways.

A stunning book, a wonderful way for people to learn about democracy and how the political process works.

Blurb for Campaigning for President, Jordan Wright, 2008, Smithsonian Books. Winner of the prestigious Worst Book of the Year (So Far) Award.

Campaigning for President is a coffee-table book, meaning it’s as big as a coffee table, and it costs as much as 1/3 bbl of sweet light crude. It’s a book about junk.

One piece of junk, showing Winfield Scott, is identified as a representation of Daniel Webster. A famous photo (think it’s from Ft. Peck) of famous FDR sitting in a car, notes “that his wheelchair is omitted.” Which is situation normal for sitting in a car.

A piece of junk from the 1884 Cleveland-Blaine campaign is identified as a “Cleveland rooster pin (the rooster, along with the more famous donkey, is a mascot of the Democratic Party.)”

Except that the pin — about six inches high in the photo — is utterly obviously not Cleveland. It’s Harrison and Morton, 1888, Republicans.

And who wrote the swooning smitten blurb about Wright’s “stunning book”? A Republican. Geritol John McCain.

Senator Obama’s been adopted by the Crow Nation of Montana. His Crow name is Barack Black Eagle, which, for those who remember Disney’s Dumbo, is probably better than Chief Black Crow. Considering the locale, it’s probably better than Barack Black Angus.

My dad was born about one mile from the Crow Rez in 1906. Since there was better hunting (shopping) in northern Wyoming than in southern Montana, families from the Rez would travois past Dad’s place each summer, and one of those families was Curly‘s.

Curly, a veteran of the long march to the Greasy Grass, wanted a son. Dad’s dad seemed to have at least one son, my dad in diapers, to spare. Curly offered fair market value, one pocket watch, for a straight-across exchange. Offer not accepted.

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